Web Directions next Sydney November 29 2024

1. Life as an entanglement of mutual obligation

Human institutions (whether they’re formal organisations or just cultural expectations) entangle us in mutual obligations. We’re happy and prosperous when we we’re doing our bit for others and they’re doing theirs for us. When they don’t work so well, it’s usually because private interests have colonised our institutions to turn social expectations to their own advantage.

For decades, human-centred design has been the driving force behind innovation. However, it’s becoming increasingly clear that placing the user at the centre of the design process may be doing more harm than good for our global systems and collective wellbeing.

In this talk, we'll explore a new approach – life-centred design – that encourages a balanced consideration of human, environmental, and ethical perspectives. Diving into the role of systems thinking and futuring, the talk will demonstrate how life-centred design can help organisations reduce their planetary impact and create responsible innovation in an increasingly complex world.

Since the release of Thaler and Sunstein's famous Nudge book in 2008, the popularity of nudge theory has skyrocketed, with over 200 Nudge units now operating worldwide. The appeal is clear: small, low-cost interventions yielding measurable effects on large populations. But have we leaned too heavily on these individual-level strategies? Critics argue that while nudges are effective, they often neglect the bigger picture—overlooking the systemic factors driving human behaviour.

In this talk, we'll explore the potential of tools from systems analysis to bridge the gap between the current practice and the potential of applied behavioural science to develop and implement value-creating systems-level change.

2. Merit selection and leadership

We think of our society as broadly meritocratic, but we’re the first civilisation that can’t build beautiful buildings. Almost invariably our leaders have won a competition to lead — a competition for fame, money, power. But that makes leadership about that competition, not goodness or serving others. Should the leaders of our public bureaucracy, our schools, hospitals, not-for-profits, libraries, media really be those who’ve out-competed their rivals and if self-assertion is a precondition for promotion, how does that bias the ‘gene pool’ from which our leaders emerge.

Sentient Design is the already-here future of intelligent interfaces: AI-mediated experiences that feel almost self-aware in their response to user needs. This is so much more than chatbots (and also much less, in exciting ways). Sentient Design moves past static presentation to transform user experiences into radically adaptive stories, conceived and compiled in real time. This experience design will animate the next generation of our craft.

There’s a lot, a lot, a lot going on here—tons of new opportunities, tons of new pitfalls. How do we realize the benefits while contending with the risks? Designer Josh Clark shares a framework of principles and techniques that you can apply in your own work today (yes, today!). It’s about AI, but also not.

By focusing on people instead of technology, Sentient Design offers a chance to build systems that bend to human needs, instead of the reverse. Josh explains how we can do it.

In this era of post-scarcity where the volume of data across the world doubles in size every two years and everything is one ChatGPT prompt away, the question arises: How do we channel this abundance into innovation and creativity? Jack Zhao delves into the evolution of data visualisation over the past decade, examining its trajectory through the interplay of data, people, and purpose. This exploration aims to equip the audience with practical strategies to foster innovation.

Stories Still Fucking Matter in a Data-Driven World.

We’re living in the age of information overload. Time is precious. Why not cut to the chase and absorb knowledge in its purest form?

Because that’s not the way knowledge works.

Sometimes, the only way to really get at the truth is through a lie. And that’s not just a metaphor — it’s a fundamental aspect of how our brains work, how we learn, and how we grow.

3. What's to be done?

We’ve known of democratic, merit seeking institutions that aren’t biased towards self-assertion and self-serving for over a thousand years. We should introduce them alongside existing institutions and expand their role as we gain experience with them. They bring out the better angels of our nature.

Jon Bell, a designer who tackled disinformation at Twitter, will present a collection of inspiring feature ideas for the future of social media. Some concepts were explored by his team but never implemented, while others draw inspiration from emerging platforms and still others go further afield in challenging our ideas of what social media can be. This talk will imagine what a truly great social media experience could look like, offering a blend of practical, tangible feature ideas and broader long term goals.

Jon Bradshaw knows marketing –as an executive, consultant, and highly respected voice for decades in the industry. Here he challenges the $700 billion martech industry with eye-opening evidence on the limitations of data-driven advertising.

Drawing on recent research and his own expertise, Jon will discuss why broad-reaching, contextual ads often surpass targeted approaches, both in effectiveness and cost-efficiency. This session will question long-held beliefs and encourage a critical reevaluation of how we use data in marketing. And of the dominant privacy-intrusive business model of the mar-tech industries.

Digital money has taken on a rather bad reputation of late, but what if the transfer money could be as frictionless, and inexpensive as the exchange of information enabled by the internet? Just as TCP/IP transformed the way information was exchanged, and drove the cost of that transfer inexorably lower, the interledger protocol, aims to do that for payments and the transfer of value.

Already connecting traditionally unbanked communities into the world’s financial systems, the protocol opens opportunities for new business models and value exchange.

How might it transform what we do online and in the physical world?

The next big idea for the web? Rewilding it. We need to treat it like a damaged and degraded natural habitat – it’s a huge, scary job to fix the web’s many social and economic harms, and its monocultural fragility, but a few key and courageous changes will help it to regenerate itself.

To get there, we need openness and competition, interoperability, transparency about how we fund key infrastructure like browsers, and lots of room for new business models.

This keynote will inform and inspire you, empowering you to think bigger and better about how we build and maintain a web that supports us all.